most knew that anything that powerful and uncontrolled must come to the attention of government at some point. The question is – to what purpose? Why should government intrude on a network that is providing so much acknowledged good without it? The answer: because it is there. And the paranoid are sure that the corporations that are involved in it are up to no good. Thus we need government’s help to keep those evil corporations in line.

One of the commenters notes:

I can see this as a telcom QoS (Quality of Service) issue … imagine if your neighbor starts downloading every movie on the face of the Earth and your ability to use your internet goes to nothing. I’m sure you’re going to call the FCC first .. right. No, you’re going to call your telcom who now has a QoS problem that they can’t do anything about .. being neutral an all.

That is the polarity. On one side is an antipathy to ‘large evil corporations’ and on the other is the freedom of those corporations to meet the needs of the customers. The choice is whether it is the government that decides or the businesses.

A general rule of thumb is that the closer you are to the problem, the more likely you are to find a good solution. In this case, the business making the link between the consumer and the I’net is much, much closer to the problems involved than the government.

Another rule of thumb is that many solutions are more likely to surface a good one than a single solution. Business provides many, government provides one.

There is also the honesty issue. If net neutrality is really just a means to get after business with high sounding rhetoric that, upon close inspection, is hypocritical, then its integrity is in question.

Net neutrality is one of those ‘behind the scenes’ issues being debated that may have implications larger than its public visibility.